


all is not lost

by JaguarCello



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Daemons, F/M, M/M, Resurrection, Revolution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:12:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1591217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaguarCello/pseuds/JaguarCello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Souls walk as animals beside their people, and there are whispers that the street-children are going missing, and nobody seems to want to talk about Dust.<br/>Things have to change, obviously, and it seems to Enjolras that they will have to raise their own heaven from that hell. Little does he know how difficult this will be, or how much he - and his dæmon, and his life - will have to change in order for that to become reality.<br/>This will be world-shattering, soul-shaking, breath-quenching, and Grantaire is probably drunk - not the most auspicious start...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The last light of the afternoon had lit up the eaves of the houses and the puddles, shining brightly on the cobblestones, and the city was busy. People thronged the streets: soldiers with their spaniel- dæmons and muskets glinting; children playing with their sparrow-cat-gazelle-ferret dæmons, in the dust of the gutter; the rich men with polished shoes and tigers at their feet, or ermines lying supine across their shoulders; the street-women, clothes in rags, with their wolves and defenders. Enjolras walked through the crowds and they parted around him like the waters of the Red Sea, and Aelia, his dæmon, a golden eagle, flew overhead.

They had practised this, the two of them – how far she could fly away before that pain hooked its way under his skin, and how quickly she could return to him, whenever there was trouble. She, like he, was proud, and did not like to admit that she could not soar to the heavens themselves. He did not like for her to leave, but when his eye caught the gleam of sun on metal – the swords, in the soldiers’ scabbards – she cocked her head to the side, and flew up until the last rays of sunlight turned her feathers to burnished copper. He ignored the niggling pain that clutched at his chest, but when she swooped lower, landing on his arm, he could breathe more easily.

She scratched at the leather glove he wore on his right arm, and leaned in closer to whisper, until her beak touched his ear. “There are forty of them in the next street,” she said, and he nodded briskly. “And then – they are everywhere, around here. We must go, and quickly,” and he felt her talons clench around his wrist more tightly. He nodded again, and turned on his heel. The crowds paid no heed to him as he moved, but he kept his head down and his eyes fixed on the cobbles, just in case; there had been whispers of a handsome young man, whose main interests were sedition and revolution, and his name was known in certain circles as quite the orator.

 He slipped around the corner, and met Combeferre, who was leaning on the shutters of the bakery to listen to the chatter. “They’ve found the ammunition,” Combeferre said quietly, nodding at him in greeting, and Enjolras froze.

“The ammunition we left to Feuilly and Bahorel to collect? Bahorel was the one who organised the entire affair – it was his contacts who proposed we do a swap,” Enjolras hissed, and Combeferre glanced towards the bakery before looking back at him.

“Feuilly decided it would be prudent to do a swap,” he said, quieter than before, so that Enjolras had to strain to hear him. His raven- dæmon shuffled along the ledge to be nearer to him. “Emrys,” Combeferre said to him, “What was it that Emaline was telling you?”

Emrys cocked his head, slightly. “She was tired – she and Feuilly had had a long day at work, so she was not as forthcoming as she has been in the past. But the workers are talking,” he said, in his gravelly voice. “She heard from another dæmon that the ammunition would be found, and so Feuilly moved it – some of it is under his hat, which he never doffs, and some of it is hidden down his trousers,” and he cawed with creaking laughter. “Nobody will find it there,” and Combeferre rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“It’s safe, Enjolras,” he said. “We need to go – the soldiers are about, and their dæmons are restless – you know how Aelia knows when it’s going to rain?” he added, and Enjolras nodded. “It’s similar to that. They can taste the – the Dust, and the tension in the air and the cracking under the paving-slabs and the fire about to consume them,” and next to him Emrys cawed. Aelia half-shrieked, and Enjolras felt his heart grow proud.

“They’ll be waiting for us at the café,” Aelia reminded them, and they nodded and moved away, their two birds spiralling above them in the splinter of sunlight.

The café was busy, but the back room was their territory. A map of the old Republic was fixed to the wall, and someone – Enjolras suspected Grantaire – had drawn a caricature of Enjolras as some sort of haughty statue in the centre of Paris. Joly and his rabbit were sat at the table, which was covered in metal filings and what appeared to be a diagram of the human body’s magnetic alliances; Bahorel was sat next to him, with Anima, his lion, standing proudly at his side, and Jehan Prouvaire was reading a Basque treatise on independence to his dæmon, Kemina – a red deer doe, coltish but bold. Bossuet and Alaia – an ibex with spindly legs – were sat on the other side, both drinking from the same glass.

“Friends,” Enjolras said, and they looked up as one. “The time is near. The government is gathering troops as we speak, and they are bright and shining and armed. Their boots are polished – and we sit here, drinking and smoking and wasting the day – “

“A day spent drinking is not a day wasted,” Grantaire said, peering through the window before clambering inside. He sat down at the table next to Jehan, and his dæmon, Constance – a wolfhound, with a fondness for playing with the urchins of the street – loped in after him. He was not yet drunk, although he had already purloined a bottle of wine from the downstairs of the shop.

“Think what you like,” Enjolras said, and went on. “We must prepare. We will have the last of ammunition when Feuilly returns from work, and everything else is in place: the muskets, the lookouts, the bandages,” and he looked down. Aelia swooped down from her perch in the rafters.

“We have to attack tomorrow, or not at all,” she said. “They say there is no hope, but there will be for us. We have to crush this,” and at her side Combeferre nodded.

“To die for France is to die for love,” Jehan Prouvaire said. “We will find out what Dust is. The orphans, the women, the downtrodden will thank us in their prayers, and the king will curse us from Hell, and we will be with the angels – “

“The angels do not care what we do,” Joly said, waspishly. “All that matters is that we win, and we do not think or talk of death or Dust. We will be reminded soon enough,” and his gaze fell upon the stacked-up rifles in the corner, and Rohais flattened her ears and settled against his forearm.  “We will be reminded,” he said again.

“Dust is a myth,” Bossuet said, sharply. “A children’s tale, meant to keep them quiet and good and – “

The door burst open, and Gavroche burst in. His hair was wild and filthy, and his cap was once blue, and he had a badge of the old Republic on his shirt; he was approaching ten, and he was that glorious, once-common occurrence. He was an urchin, a _gamin_ without compunction, and he had formed a solid friendship with Grantaire. Their dæmons got on comfortably – his, now a terrier, was called Berdine – hurled herself to the floor next to Constance.

Gavroche remained standing, breathing heavily. “Children are disappearing,” he said, and the atmosphere in the room seemed to thicken. He looked around. “Just the street children – four went missing this past week, and they never lose their way in this city,” he added, and Enjolras looked at him.

“What are they saying, Gavroche? What are the rumours?” he asked, and Gavroche cocked his head like a sparrow to consider. He collected secrets like the birds collected crumbs, from the rich and poor and church-men alike; he hated without discrimination, but he loved his friends.

“They say – they say they are being _eaten_ ,” and there was the scrape of a chair-leg as Bahorel stood up, and then a clatter as Amina knocked the chair to the side with her tail. Gavroche scrubbed at his face. “I mean – it’s only the older ones, the bigger ones. Older than me – maybe thirteen or fourteen? The children who have settled dæmons, or near enough. A boy who slept in Notre Dame when he could has gone, and his dæmon just settled into a dove. A girl called Marie, who lived in the gutter like the rest of us, went the night after Jean became a lizard of some sort, and we never heard anything,” and he was pale and he was scared. Berdine switched into a ferret, and buried herself in his neck; he held her tight.

“Who would eat them, though?” Jehan asked, stroking Kemina’s horns.

“People are starving,” Bossuet said, quietly. “People are desperate and angry and – “

“People are better than that,” Emrys said, and Combeferre stroked his feathers.

“People are the worst thing about this planet,” Grantaire countered, and Constance wagged her tail, and he took a long draught from his bottle. Enjolras looked away.

“It does not do to dwell on – on what could happen. We need to stop this – for the children, if not for the rest of society. This is the government, I am sure of it. This is because of Dust – “ but he was interrupted by Gavroche.

“Dust?” he asked, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop. Berdine poked her head up from out of his shirt-neck, and echoed the question.

“We need to plan this,” Bossuet said firmly. “Where are Courfeyrac and Feuilly?”

 The sun had gone down completely, and the bright blue of the sky had turned to inky black at the height of the heavens, by the time Courfeyrac and Feuilly came through the door. Feuilly was half-asleep on his feet, leaning heavily on Emaline, his donkey dæmon. Courfeyrac was more excited, and Hestia, his squirrel, was leaping from shoulder to arm to shoulder to head. He was followed by Marius, a quiet young man, and his dæmon, a lynx called Félicie, who was far bolder than he was. Marius was a new member of the group, who seemed to have joined completely by accident – but he was filled with a fervour stronger than some.

“You’re late,” Grantaire said, belligerently. “Feuilly, I am sure that you have a valid excuse, not to mention the ammunition, but Courfeyrac and Marius – well” he added, taking another draught. “If you get drunk enough, I was told, you can see Dust,” and he took another drink.

“Dust, you say?” Courfeyrac said, taking off his jacket. “Well, we are here now, and we have had quite a day. Marius sat in the sun for too long as I was showing him the delights of the Seine, and he is burnt all over, and oh! We heard that children are missing – just the street children, but Éponine told Marius. She is quite in love with him,” he added, grinning.

“She _said_ ,” Marius supplied, ignoring the growing flush to his cheeks, “that she thinks her parents have nothing to do with it for once, and that we should be careful when the Dust starts falling from the sky – “

“Dust, again?” Grantaire said, and laughed. Everyone else remained silent. “Oh, they say you can see Dust when you fall in _love_ , which seems to be a good reason never to do such a thing. The women I have loved – “ and Courfeyrac gave a gently snort of derision, but Bossuet nudged him into silence – “have all said that they could see Dust even though I am so ugly,” and he laughed again, taking another sip. There was another long pause.

“We are fighting tomorrow,” Enjolras said. “There have been developments – this century cannot end like the last one. There is a way to change this world forever, but reality must be cracked in two – “

“Two?” said Combeferre, smiling.

“Very well,” Aelia said, and Enjolras rolled his eyes. “We must overthrow reality and build a new heaven. We are to take on heaven itself, if we can find it, in the flotsam and jetsam of the new world order,” she said proudly.

The silence stretched, until Jehan pushed back his chair with a creak. “Looks like we will get to meet those angels, one way or another,” he said, and sat back down with a full glass. “We will see Dust, even if we cannot see love, or life,” and Grantaire laughed.

“Should I take a broom tomorrow?” Bossuet enquired, politely, and Enjolras smiled at that. It wasn’t funny, but laughing seemed a better option than anything else, and so he did.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> death and Dust might be the same thing; Enjolras is about to find out.   
> Grantaire has a different theory.

The next morning was sunny, as if God had forgotten that boys could go off to die in bright sunshine, and the horses of the parades were gleaming and groomed. Their soldiers – riding their daemons, or with them running behind as gods – were just as polished, and the hooves on the horses rang out loudly on the cobblestones in time with the drums. Crowds lined the streets, old and young and poor above all, shivering in wretched shirts and tattered blankets despite the heat, but smiling still. A shout went up from one of the _gamins,_ whose daemon had spotted the funeral-carriage; Enjolras imagined the coffin, the daemon-coin in Lamarque’s mouth, and shivered.

 “What was his daemon’s name?” he asked in an aside to Aelia, who was inspecting the curve of her talons. She shuffled closer to his ear.

“She was called Hygapanthia, and she was a white lioness – delusions of grandeur ignored, I have heard that she was lovely,” she said, and stretched her wings. “Are you ready?”

 He looked across the crowd. The mood had shifted to grim-faced realism, and Courfeyrac was by his side. “Once they turn the corner, the guard will have to switch sides to give the salute. We must act then,” he said, and Hestia curled her tail in excitement. Jehan pinned his badge more securely on his chest.

Emrys cawed in his ear, and Combeferre leaned over to nudge him. “The corner is our only chance,” he added, and Enjolras nodded. He was holding a red flag, bright as blood, and now he stepped forwards, out from the safety of the crowd. People stared; a goat- daemon skittered out from his path.

“Citizens,” he called, and his voice carried up to where Aelia was hovering, level with the roof-tops of the tallest buildings in the city. She keened, and his face was bright with passion.

“For too long have we skulked in the shadows of the great and good,” he said, and his words were fire and kingsblood. “For too long have we drifted with the ebb and flow of their fortunes and their wars. When the Bastille was stormed and democracy forged in the heat of battle, tempered with reason – when France became a country of liberty, equality, brotherhood, when we overthrew the old hypocrisies –“ he leaped forwards again, seizing the side of the carriage. Bahorel and Anima were with him, and as he climbed onto the back of the carriage, Bahorel hit the guard with his own rifle butt. Anima cuffed him to the cobbles, where he rolled into the crowd.

“We are born the same as any man,” Enjolras called, and the crowd listened. A musket was fired; Combeferre shot back with two pistols whilst Emrys flew to the eyes of the man who had shot, and Feuilly – in the crowd – called for anger.

“We need,” he said to a woman with a horse-like face which matched her daemon, “to be free. We need the same knowledge that the men of learning have – “

“I need a volunteer,” Enjolras said to the crowd. “One who can tell me where and when the armies will attack,” and a man stepped forwards.

“I was in the army as a young man,” he said, and Enjolras nodded.

“Dust,” Grantaire said to another woman, “is visible when you’re drunk. I’m drunk,” and she shook him off; he heaved himself to the seat of the carriage, and held his pistol to the head of the driver. Constance nipped at the feet of the horses until they cantered, and the parade scattered as soldiers seized their weapons and swords were drawn. Bossuet ducked, just missing a musket-ball which was sent spinning into the crowd; a man fell, his daemon turning to golden dust. Screams rent the air.

“Murderer!” cried Joly, hurling himself upon the nearest soldier.

“No knowledge is sacred,” Combeferre said, reasonably, to the crowd. “No man can kill with sure knowledge of what happens to us, and to our daemons when we turn to Dust. We are more than mysteries, and this place is where the boundaries between mysteries grow less. The skies are thin here, and this place is ancient, and we can burst through one world and into a new one, a glorious one - " 

“The barricades!” Enjolras called, leaping from the carriage and racing across the square. The others followed him, tearing round the corner to the street where they had chosen the arena for their battle.

“Citizens,” Courfeyrac shouted, “We have need of your chairs and tables,” and the shutters above them opened as furniture was hurled to them. A piano crashed down in front of them, sending the keys to roll into the gutter; a table with ornately carved legs, and chairs with broken backs, and coffins and old shutters and pieces of wood landed, and it was more than they had hoped. The barricade rose quickly, Gavroche clambering over it here and there to add ever more precarious pieces to act as shields, and they set up on the top.

“I think we will see far more dust, before the day is out,” Enjolras said, and Aelia swept her wings.

Their spy looked at them, and slipped from the barricade. Enjolras watched him go, and realised that he knew nothing about this man, but he returned quickly. “There will be no attack – they wish to make you tired, and keep you waiting, until you make a mistake,” he said, and Enjolras nodded.

“We will see a lot of Dust,” Emrys said quietly. Grantaire looked at Enjolras, but did not speak. He stood up, wobbling slightly.

“I am going get some wine,” he said, and went inside the shop. He returned with several bottles, and had already opened one by the time he had sat back down behind the barricade.

Gavroche slunk to their side of the barricades, holding a pistol he had got from a body. “I want another pistol,” he said, and saw the man who had volunteered to be their spy, returned from his misson. “You’re a policeman,” he said, and narrowed his eyes. “You’re a spy – “

Javert, for that was his name, was tied to a pillar in the wine-shop cellar and left there; his dog –daemon slumped at his feet, whining.

Marius appeared from a side-street, wild-eyed, and as he moved towards the barricade he heard a musket-fire, but it did not hit him. He glanced back, and saw Enjolras and Combeferre and Courfeyrac firing back, dropping down to reload and then standing up, crouched behind the makeshift parapets, to shoot at the soldiers who had advanced upon them.

“Back!” Marius shouted, holding a torch to a barrel of powder, and the soldiers stopped. “Back, or I touch the powder to the light and we all see what Dust is made of,” and they looked uneasily at each other.

“Back!” he said again, moving the torch closer to the barrel.

“You’ll send yourself with us,” their captain said, and Marius nodded, eyes wild in the light of the flames. Félicie hissed at them.

“And myself,” he said, and they looked around.

“Retreat!” called the captain, and he looked at the barricade. “You have no chance – give up, now, and you can go home to your families – “ and Enjolras scoffed at that, and the captain melted back into the shadows, and his daemon slunk back with him.

Marius looked down, and saw a boy curled at the foot of the barricade; he clambered down. A wolf- daemon was slumped near him, whining softly.

“I have a letter from Cosette,” the boy said, and he recognised her; it was Éponine, and blood was staining her jacket. “I kept it from you – I hoped we would die together. I hoped I would die with you,” she added, as if the two meant different things to her.

Her daemon stirred. “We – we took it from her house in the Rue Plumet,” he said, voice rasping as the life-forced bled out of Éponine and onto the cobbles. He wondered, almost idly, who would wash their blood from the stones.

She pressed a hand to her chest. “Would you give me a kiss, after I am gone?” She shifted slightly, and gasped. “I do not – I do not feel that it will be very long, now,” and he nodded dumbly, and held her tightly, murmuring under his breath.

“Oh,!” she said suddenly, and smiled brightly, and her daemon vanished. He watched the movement of her chest stop, and the golden dust drift back into the parts of the universe it came from, and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. He sat with her, and then took the letter; Combeferre came to lift her body and move it to a less gloomy place.

“Her sacrifice will not be in vain,” Enjolras said, and Grantaire raised his bottle to the heavens. They sat like that for a while, silent, and the two looked at each other.

“Do you think,” Grantaire said, “that Dust depends on love? Did Éponine look so happy as she died, because she saw Dust? Or was it just the pain which ends? Can you die, if you have known true love? Or if you – put your hands on another person, feel their body  - feel their daemon, even – “

Enjolras looked away. “That’s wrong, to touch another daemon,” he said, and Grantaire smiled.

“What a show you put on! As if I don’t know the pain which stalks your veins, or the secrets you told me,” and Enjolras turned around completely.

“That was wrong of me, too. To treat you like that, to _do_ that – “

“I wished for it. I dreamed of it,” Grantaire said darkly, and Enjolras looked at him as if the others could not see the way he looked at it.

“You would dream that I tell you that you are worthless?” he said; Grantaire looked at his daemon for a second and then laughed.

“I am loyal to you, Enjolras. I believe in you, although I do not and will never meet your expectations. I believe – “

“You should get some rest, Marius,” Enjolras said, turning his back on Grantaire. He looked towards where Éponine’s body had been laid. “Be careful, everyone,” he added.

“Cosette has gone to England,” Marius said loudly, and then rested his head in his hands as he sank down to sit on the barricade. “If I die, who would weep? Not my grandfather, that much is certain. And if I die without telling her that I love her – well, what sort of death would that be?” Félicie, next to him, curved her body into his side.

“I could deliver a letter,” Gavroche said, tears running down his cheeks, and so Marius wrote a letter, perched on the end of a barricade, and sealed it with a kiss. Gavroche returned, followed by a man with dark hair and a fox for a daemon; she had bright green eyes, and the man took Javert away. They heard a pistol shot, and nothing further, and the man returned with a grim face, and took up a place near to Marius.

Gavroche was the next to die that night, scampering around for cartridges on the dead bodies which were slumped in front of the barricades. His daemon howled with each bullet, until she sank to the floor with him and vanished. Grantaire watched, and took out another wine bottle.

They did not sleep that night, apart from Grantaire, who was in a drunken stupor in the café before the sun had gone down.

The end, when it came – sharp and swift – was almost painless. Courfeyrac was shot in the neck, blood spraying Enjolras in the face; Hestia pressed her face to his neck, and disappeared. Feuilly and Bahorel and Bossuet were bayoneted, their daemons turning into one golden rush before vanishing. Combeferre died as he was stooping to help another fallen man. Joly, too, died next to him. Jehan died calling for liberty, and they did not see him die, but they saw his daemon as she turned to Dust on the wind.

 Enjolras retreated, inside the wine shop, slipping on the blood of his friends. Aelia flew with him, dodging a bullet as it flew, and Grantaire woke up, and pressed his hand into Enjolras’s before they died, and then they died.

 Enjolras opened his eyes. He was still holding Grantaire’s hand.

 


End file.
